Thursday, August 04, 2005

A former British intelligence agent, jailed in 2002 for linking the British government with paying an Islamic militant group $160,000 in a failed assassination attempt on Colonel Mu'ammar al-Qadhafi of Libya, said this week the recent London bombings have all the earmarks of an inside job just like 9/11.

“It’s amazing how many aspects of the two events are so similar,” said David Shayler, the former MI5 agent and whistle blower, in a telephone conversation this week from his home in Eastbourne on the southern coast of England.

Shayler, a thorn in the British government’s side ever since he blew the whistle in 1997 about rampant corruption within both arms of British intelligence, MI5 (domestic) and MI6 (foreign), said he has just began looking into the details of the 7/7 attacks, but what’s being released through the press and government reports shows a strikingly similar pattern to what he calls “the same type of misinformation thrown out after 9/11.”

“First, we learn about the training exercises going on here just like 9/11. Next, they release suspicious evidence left behind by the culprits as well as quickly releasing identifying pictures of the suspects just like the did after 9/11,” he said.

Shayler added that what’s even more suspicious is the private security firm in charge of the training drills prior to 7/7 had ties to former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Further, he also received information that one of the named suicide bombers, whose picture was released in the London press, has turned up alive and well in Pakistan.

“Just like in the United States, we here in England are being bombarded with what looks like a lot of misinformation in the press,” said Shayler. “Apparently, one of the supposed suicide bombers has turned up alive just like six or seven of the 19 Arab hijackers turned up alive after 9/11.”

Asked about the sentiment in Britain towards President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair’s support of America’s war on terror after the London bombings claimed more than 50 lives, he said:

“To put it politely, there is downright hatred for Bush here on the streets of London. Many Brits feel, as I do, that he led us into this war and is actually responsible for making England a more dangerous place to live now than before the illegal war in Iraq.

“And after the release of the Downing Street Memo, which clearly provides high-level documented evidence from the head of M16 that Bush and Blair lied about the threat of WMD in Iraq, I think most of the British people are simply fed up but at the same time frightened at what might happen next.

“The British people would simply like to get rid of Blair, but unlike America, we have no political means set up to do this. However, most people here feel that Tony Blair actually acts more like the First Envoy to America rather than England’s Prime Minister.

Besides believing the London bombing was an inside job, Shayler also believes 9/11 was a staged event, saying the cover-up of hard evidence and eye witness testimony contradicting the official story are the main ingredients first leading him to believe the U.S. government caused 9/11 in order to create a world wide climate of fear and war.

“It’s a crime to obstruct justice and that is exactly what the American authorities did when they allowed FEMA to haul away all the steel from the World Trade Center, shipping it to China,” said Shayler. “Now this type of cover-up tells me right-off the authorities are hiding something much bigger, something that needs answering.

“The more I look at 9/11, the more I am convinced it was a staged event. I am convinced the U.S. government manipulated events - let it happen – to create a trigger for the invasion of Afghanistan, the invasion of Iraq and of course what they're trying to do now with the imminent invasions of Iran and Syria.”

Shayler said FBI intercepts, failed defense protocols and the suspicious activities of a number of officials in various government agencies days, weeks and months prior to 9/11 also directly point to an inside job.

Besides the government irregularities and cover-up, he also suggests 9/11 was most likely also intended to be, from an intelligence strategist’s view, an attempt at a larger coup de’tat to take over the American government and bring martial law.

“You have to remember that there were weapons discovered on planes that didn't take off on 9/11. Now people have obviously postulated that they were going perhaps to attack the White House or Capitol Hill. That looks to me like an attempt to destroy American government and declare a state of emergency, in fact a coup de'tat, a violent coup de'tat."

Making analogies between explosives used in IRA bombings he investigated while working on the Irish resistance, he said it was virtually impossible for jet fuel, as the American government contends, to bring down the Twin Towers.

He compared the WTC to an IRA bombing in front of the Baltic Exchange Building in Bishopsgate, saying a thousand tons of homemade explosives were used without a much smaller building collapsing.

“So you are telling me the World Trade Center collapsed from jet fuel? It’s highly suspicious if not impossible,” said Shayler. “And then ask yourself about the suspicious nature of Building No. 7. It all looks to me like a controlled demolition.”

Regarding the bigger intelligence picture and the state of the world with increased terrorism now erupting in London and Egypt, Shayler drew the battle lines facing both the people of Britain and America.

“Let there be no doubt that the people of the free world are engaged in a war,” said Shayler, suggesting however that the enemy is within and not simply radical Islamic terrorists. “In the next few years, we are either going to see the people of the free world rise up against these fascists, now setting the stage for global war, or we are going to see the end of democracy as we know it with martial law the end result.”

Shayler’s troubles with the British government in 1997 after he voluntarily left MI5 and blew the whistle, allegedly taking sensitive documents and accusing two MI6 agents, David Watson and Richard Bartlitt, of plotting to assassinate Mu'ammar al-Qadhafi of Libya in 1996.

He also accused MI5 of failing to warn or react to an impending terrorist attack on the Israeli Embassy in 1994.

After fleeing Britain, he was arrested in France, spending four months in a French jail and being held without charges being filed. Upon release, he won an extradition battle in the French courts, but voluntarily decided to return to England in 2000.

Upon his return, he was charged with violated England’s tough Official State Secrets Act, as a gag order was effectively placed on everything, including media coverage, surrounding his case.

“I was effectively never allowed to mount a defense or even show facts why I acted in the national interest,” said Shayler, being convicted in November of 2002 and sentenced to six months in jail, but only serving seven weeks of the sentence as well as seven weeks of house arrest.

Shayler, who joined MI5 in 1991 unable to find work as a journalist, said he was an unlikely candidate for the job, never thinking he would get hired after answering an advertisement hiding the true nature of the position.

“I was a journalist and came from an unlikely background for this type of work,” said Shayler. “I really didn’t know what the nature of the job was until the final round of interviews and I was shocked when I was hired.

“I stayed with MI5 until I saw the lies and corruption. All I wanted was to tell the truth, nothing more.”

Since his release from jail, Shayler has been busy on the lecture circuit and has released a book with author Annie Machon titled “Spies, Lies and Whistle Blowers.”

The book chronicles his falling out with MI5, what took place after he blew the whistle, life on the run in Europe and his arrest and imprisonment.